Perception of the unknown

Yesterday, while I was working on a Linux server, setting some services up properly, someone came in. It was kinda lunchtime and I had started a few longer running processes so we started talking about this and that.

Since I was “semi-working” I kept one eye one my open terminal window to see if things were OK or if I”d have to fix something (you know the drill) when the other guy, who”s not a computer person, asked: “And all that stuff does really make any sense to you at all?”

It”s a great example for how people often perceive the unknown: When we look at something we have absolutely no clue about, we often don”t break it down into its parts to understand it, we see it as one solid thing that makes no sense.

Experts completely grok some thing. Someone trained understands most of it and someone with a little experience in a similar area will probably be able to make some kind of educated guesses what means what or will be able to derive a few things. All those cases show how people can properly partition that huge bulk of information in front of them to follow the divide and conquer strategy: You don”t get the complete thing at once but as soon as you partition the problem you understand the parts which leads to finally understanding the whole thing.

The untrained mind often cannot properly divide things so they stay big, incomprehensible and in the end somewhat scary. The impulse is not to try to find parts to understand but to run away from it: “I just don”t get math.”, “I never understood any of the computer stuff”, “I just can”t write.”

Those are all the same issues: A problem in front of the speaker is not being properly compartmentalized and therefore stays completely opaque with no simple part that would allow a first approach.

It”s important to realize that, when you want to explain something, you first have to make sure the person you are talking to can properly compartmentalize the topic at hand. Somebody who has never really done anything useful in a terminal will not understand what you do, he”ll just keep copy”n”pasting crappy lines from the Ubuntu Wiki (yes that was a cliche ).

What did I do? I showed the other guy how to look at a terminal and after a while he realized that one thing was kinda like a progress bar, that another thing told me which object the machine was working on.

I destroyed the magic that only big and scary blackboxes can have but next time he won”t look at me like I was a crazy person typing secret spells into the keyboard.